Page Ten
THE UNITED AMERICAN
EDITOR IAL
AN UNJUST INDICTMENT OF THE IMMIGRANT
JUST WHAT source of information is responsible
for the declaration recently issued by the
Methodist Board of Temperance Prohibition and Pub
lic Morals, that the large wet cities of the country
are nests of “unassimilated foreigners” and that not
more than ten per cent, of the people of New York
have an understanding of American society, may be
accepted by many people as an authentic statement
of facts, but it is nothing short of criminal to make
a statement so unlimited in its scope that it leaves
the individual citizen to make whatever deductions
he sees fit. Prejudice thrives on such statements,
and all the more when they emanate from such seem
ingly unquestionable sources.
The records from every municipal court in the land
will testify to the fact that liquor law violations are
as much a crime among native Americans as they are
among the immigrants, only that we are more in
tolerant of the foreign born violator than we are of
the native. Why write a blanket indictment and
make it so sweeping that it points an accusing finger
at every immigrant? There is more prejudice than
fact back of the entire Methodist Board’s statement,
and nothing is more inimical to Americanization and
assimilation of the immigrants in America than just
such expressions of unmitigated prejudice.
If less than ten per cent, of New York’s population
has an understanding of American society, then,
certainly, it takes in a lot more territory than the im
migrant contingents of that city represent. If the
Methodist Board considers the Methodists “the Ameri
can Society” of New York, it should have emphasized
the word “less” and added that there isn’t anything
particularly wrong about most of- the remaining
ninety per cent. Let’s see. There are no immigrants
in the Southern States, yet that’s where moonshining
and bootlegging has been practiced so long that it
is a science. The state of Maine is not an immigrant
state, yet Ford’s old tune fiddler from that common
wealth, Mellie Dunham, who has lived there all his
life, recently told the “Westerners” around Detroit
that “you can get all the rum you want right now”
anywhere in the state of Maine.
The town officials and a judge in a certain Lake
Erie town in Ohio, who some time ago were arrested
by the Federal government and charged with being
members of a bootlegging ring that had been smug
gling wholesale quantities of liquor from the Canadian
shores of the vast lake to the Ohio town in question,
were not “unassimilated foreigners” any more than
were officials of an Eastern town, whose names were
recently in the news columns as supposed partners
in illicit traffic and distribution of contraband wet
goods.
If we take these facts as they are, and apply the
Methodist Board’s analysis, then it is undisputable
that “American Society” seems to be slipping in many
January 1927
places where there are no “unassimilated foreigners”
to grease the skids.
Why not let us make a beginning at getting
acquainted with ourselves, quit chasing imaginary
causes for the internal “breakdowns” we find today
in America, and deal honestly with the human
elements, ourselves included. If we do, it isn’t going
to take us long to take the kinks out of the lines and
enable us to draw cooperative energy for good from
every reservoir of our human cosmos. This growing
idea of girding one’s loins with the detestable
cloak of conceit, throwing the chin in the air and
marching along the highway of citizenship with an
aloofness that has offence and contempt written all
over it, is not cutting good citizenship after any true
American pattern. The original formula for this idea
nearly wrecked Europe. Let it develop along its
present lines over here, and it won’t take half as long
to collect its detestable harvest in America.
UNJUSTIFIABLE CONTENTIONS OF DEFENSE
TV 0 MATTER which way the government’s suit to
recover thirty million dollars additional federal
taxes from ex-holders of minority stock in the Henry
Ford Company turns out, the common people of the
country will never believe that the high officials of
the American government who are responsible for
this action, were actuated by political motives in in
stituting proceedings.
So far as we are concerned we never found any
thing with a Ford brand on it that didn’t have a
“knock” in it. Propaganda had no poison sting until
the Ford factories commenced to turn it out in
world market quantities. The Ford propaganda
makers may capture every gullible American with an
eye for a little demi-God, but as long as the good old
ship America is on her own keel, by the saving grace
of her intellectual ballast and her intelligent citizen
ship, there isn’t much chance for the chatter from
Detroit. Our best wishes are with Andrew Mellon,
Secretary of the Treasury, that he may succeed in
collecting, with interest, that which is due the govern
ment from all Ford stockholders. There is consola
tion in knowing that when Ford passes out and Uncle
Sam lays claim to the inheritance tax that will then
be due from that vast estate, enough replacement of
capital will at once take place, to put the Ford manu
facturing interests out of the one-man control and
into the hands of people who necessarily will be re
sponsible to a vast number of investors.
The one-man ownership and control of vast in
dustries which have been created through public de
mand rather than any extraordinary individual ingenu
ity, is just as inimical to the common good in a
democrary as the one-man control of a town, a state
or a nation. Where such conditions abound the public
officials are generally spineless puppets who serve the
one who controls rather than the ones who are con
trolled. Too many public officials in America have
failed to take action in the interest of the govern
ment because of the influence of such vast interests
as those at issue.
Andrew Mellon may not stand approved every
where for the things he has done as an official of the